Man with sleep paralysis recreates his nightmares in photos

“He wakes up, eyes wide open, but his body is paralysed. It’s here that he gets bone-chilling hallucinations and visions”, and turns them into mystical photos.

The following photos might seem like they’re from a horror film, but for people like Nicolas Bruno, these images are very real.

The 22-year-old photographer from New York suffers from sleep paralysis. It’s a weird and terrifying phenomenon which occurs during the REM (rapid eye movement) phase of sleep. Our bodies shut down while our minds conjure up dreams.

For Bruno, however, his mind conjures nightmares. He wakes up, eyes wide open, but his body is paralysed. It’s here that he gets bone-chilling hallucinations and visions.

“For people who haven’t experienced it, and say they want to – they really don’t,” Bruno told CNN. “You’ve never woken up being choked out by shadow hands. You’ve never had a looming figure floating above your bed, screaming into your ear.”

“I’ve always been into photography, and it became my way of battering through my terrorizing sleep paralysis experiences and expressing my creative conscience in ways that I never thought I could,” he told io9.

“I became fascinated with the endless possibilities of conceptual photography and photo manipulation and developed my skills accordingly.”

His ongoing series features his nightly terrors recreated using numerous random props, such as bowler hats, gas masks, lanterns, suitcases, arrows, and bath tubs, to name a few. The results are something that straddles the macabre and the surreal – something that all sleep paralysis victims know all too well.

In fact, Bruno’s work now has inspired many to come out and talk about their experiences openly.

“I’ve gotten so many responses from people who have had these dreams and didn’t know what they meant. I think it’s my little mission to spread the word of this condition.”